Como Hacer una Pinata

      Between this week and last, I learned how to make a pinata. One of the guests, Maria, heard about a pinata-making class at the local library, and she invited Maribel and I to go. On the way in, we saw lots of little kids, so we figured we'd be the oldest people there. We weren't, but just in case, we decided that we could pretend to be Maria's kids.

So here are the materials required:

Plastic Christmas-tree ornament

8.5x11” Card stock

Tape

Paper mache mix (flour and water works just as well)

Newspapers

Tissue paper

Scissors

And here are the steps:

1. Cut your pieces of cardstock in half the short way so you have two square-ish pieces
2. Finagle the pieces into cones and tape them into place
   Trim the top of the cones so they're flat
   
   
   
3. Make a bunch more cones. You'll want 6-8, or maybe more. A crazy old postman next to us had like 14.
   
   
   
4. Snip the edges of the cones so they'll lay flat against the Christmas ornament
   
   
   
5. Start taping the cones to the Christmas ornament
   
   
   
6. Keep taping them. Try to keep them symmetrical and stuff, but really, it's whatever
   
   
   
7. Smile and laugh with your fellow classmates
   
   
   
8. It's kind of hard to tape around the hanger-thing on the ornament. I just cut some extra room in my cones. For heaven's sake, don't put a cone OVER the ornament hanger-thing. Because then you'll have nowhere to hang it from! And you'll also have to pull all your cones off and start again. Not that I would know from experience or anything...
   
   
   
9. Paper-mache the crap out of it. Don't get the strips too wet because then you'll have an ungodly mess, but make sure you do a good job and cover all the cardstock and tape, because this is what makes the pinata nice and strong.
   
   
   
10. Leave it to dry for a week (or maybe just a couple days, I don't know).
    
    
    
11. When you come back to it, get yourself some tissue paper. We used some that was super long, idk the dimensions or anything, but I suppose it was probably an 18” square or something like that. You'll want to fold it in half, then half again the same way, so you've got a paper folded into a big strip with four layers.
    
    
    
12. Then fold that strip in half the other way, and then again, so you have a little fat rectangle with a bunch of layers. Then here's the tricky part. Cut the two long sides off. This way, you have a big long strip that you can unfold. You could also just cut along the fold, I guess, but then you have to worry about not cutting exactly on the fold and having those little folded-over bits on the edges, and those are just annoying.
13. Then snip a fringe into your little rectangle. I'd go about 2/3 of the way up or so.
    
    
    
    
    
14. Make lots of fringy things.
    
    
    
15. Then take a pair of scissors and run the blade along the fringes so they curl. It's like what you do with curling ribbon, except harder, because tissue paper is fragile. You'll get the hang of it after you've ripped off a couple of fringe pieces.
    
    
    
16. Now you can take some artistic licensure with the rest of these instructions. This is just what I did, obviously you can do whatever you want. I took a piece of the fringe and wrapped it around the tip, securing it with more paper-mache paste. But not too much, because tissue paper is fragile and it'll just break if you put too much on.
    
    
    
    
    
    
17. Keep adding layers and strips of curled fringe to the arms of your pinata, securing it in a few places with each trip around the arms (you don't want to put too much paste on because otherwise it will just be a wet sticky mess, and tissue paper sticks to anything that is even thinking about being wet and sticky).
    
    
    
18. Take some time to make silly faces because this is actually kind of a frustrating part of making pinatas.
    
    
    
19. Just keep adding fringe
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
20. Close-up
    
    
    
21. Just keep adding fringe
    
    
    
22. The library kicked us out after 2 hours, so we went home and made some flour-water paste and finished our pinatas at home. Yay, Maria is done!
    
    
    
23. Maribel and I are still slaving away...
    
    
    
24. Covering the spaces on the “body” of the pinata is the hardest. Just use your best judgment, and when in doubt, shove some curly tissue paper in there and paste it down.
    
    
    
25. Yay, I'm done!
    
    
    
    
    
    
26. Don Petronilo heard our commotion and came hurrying out of his room with a big stick (idk why he has a big stick in his room) because he wanted to break open our pinatas and eat the candy inside.

 That was a helluva lot of photos, you have no idea how long it took to upload and organize them all. I guess if I'd been smart, I would have broken it up into two posts, but I didn't, so thanks for suffering through the mother of all blog posts.